less. For I worked till it was pitch-dark at the castle;
and after it was closed in, so I could work inside, I
often worked till ten o'clock by candlelight. I do not
know how I lived with so little sleep; I am afraid I
slept pretty late on Sundays. But the castle grew and
grew, and the common-room, which I was most eager to
finish wholly before cold weather, was in complete order
three full weeks before my mother's birthday came.

Then came the joy of furnishing it. To this I had
looked forward all the summer, and I had measured with my
eye many a bit of furniture, and priced, in an unaffected
way, many an impossible second-hand finery, so that I
knew just what I could do and what I could not do.

My mother had always wanted a Banner stove. I knew
this, and it was a great grief to me that she had none,
though she would never say anything about it.

To my great joy, I found a second-hand Banner stove,
No. 2, at a sort of old junk-shop, which was, in fact, an
old curiosity shop not three blocks away from Ninety-
ninth Avenue. Some one had sold this to them while it
was really as good as new, and yet the keeper offered it
to me at half-price.

I hung round the place a good deal, and when the man
found I really had money and meant something, he took me
into all sorts of alleys and hiding-places, where he
stored his old things away. I made fabulous